SEC approves stadium-wide alcohol sales
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey has announced that SEC programs will now be allowed to sell alcohol throughout their stadiums.
August 1, 2019, will be the beginning of a new era. Something that the SEC has never seen before in football, or any other sport. Beginning in August 2019 all SEC schools will be allowed to sell alcohol stadium-wide. This doesn’t mean every SEC school will sell alcohol in their stadiums, but it gives them all the opportunity to do so.
The State of Tennessee already approved for the University of Tennessee to sell alcohol in their stadiums they were just waiting on the SEC’s approval. Now, they will be able to go ahead with that and will be one of the SEC schools to sell alcohol in their football stadium this fall. Vanderbilt will also look into and most likely end up bringing alcohol to their stadiums as well this fall.
Middle Tennessee State and Memphis have been ahead of the curve when it comes to alcohol sales. Memphis began selling alcohol at their football games in 2009 while MTSU started selling alcohol last fall. Regardless, it is a no brainer to bring alcohol to college stadiums and arenas. If you go to any SEC football game you will likely see people sneaking alcohol in since they can’t purchase it in the stadium so why not prevent that and allow people to purchase that same alcohol in the stadium.
Not having alcohol in stadiums has also led to people drinking more at tailgates before kickoff, which leads to more people being drunk before the game even starts. With alcohol sales now in play, people may be more willing to pace themselves before game time and not take a chance on getting kicked out for being drunk or sneaking in alcohol.
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The SEC hasn’t been on top of things recently when it comes to things like this but it looks like Sankey and company are ready to move forward and make the SEC a more progressive conference. Before today, the SEC was the only power five conferences to not allow alcohol sales in their stadiums but now they don’t have to cling on to that fact any longer.